Scorched (9 page)

“Yes,” I said defiantly.

He laughed and took a big gulp of his truth. “Yes!? And how is that?”

“Because there are an infinite amount of truths. But there can be only one truth within me,” I replied.

“And what truth is that?”

“What I see is true because I see it. What you see is true because you see it. Those aren’t two separate truths. What is real can only exist inside of me. You can say something that might change what I believe to be real and change my truth, but in terms of what is real and what isn’t, all that matters is what I think. Newbury views me as inferior. They see my friends as subhuman. But I don’t see that. What they believe isn’t true. What I believe is fact even if everything points to my being wrong, in my mind, that’s all that matters.”

The Mayor gulped down the rest of his drink. “You should get some sleep.”

I nodded and walked back upstairs. I didn’t know if what I said was a mistake. I had never spoken that way to anyone in my life, but I had never been spoken to like that either. I had never had somebody challenge me in such a way that prompted me to discuss what I believed, to divulge my thoughts. Those had always been private to me. They had always been my own but now, they were the Mayor’s and he could do with them what he pleased. Every time he looked at me now, he would know what I was thinking, what I believed. Did I just give up my last bit of privacy?

I got back in bed and looked at the ceiling. At that very moment, I knew the one truth I believed, the one truth that would set me free.

I would reach the surface.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Change:

The change was inevitable.

School was suspended and we were all forced to attend self-defense classes, even Kaolin, who had only appeared in public once since the auction. I had woken up early and decided to explore the city on my own for the first time before the class.

I weaved through the residential sector and found a path on the outskirts that led upward. I went as high as I could and found a spot where I could see the entire city below.

I felt higher than I had ever been and I had this unusual sensation, this fear that I might fall. I imagined the pain from the impact. I guess the higher you go, the harder you fall.

I stood against the dirt wall and saw everything. The city was magnificent. More buildings than I could possibly count. Most of them were rectangular with windows made of glass (a protective substance that you could see through). At the East Sector, the buildings winded up an uneven path. Most of the structures were scrunched together with tiny alleys in between. In the South Sector, the buildings were bigger and more spread apart. The West Sector consisted of the industrial businesses, including the farms and pens.

And then there was the North Sector. It differed the most from the other districts. It was cold and abandoned, a vestige from the past, a path from the old to the new. At the northern most tip of the city, a path led up to a mechanical structure called an elevator. Before the flare hit, several individuals predicted the disaster and created the town. They brought the smartest and most capable people down to the city and created Newbury. But once the flare hit and the surface was scorched, the founders of the city blocked off the path.

They hadn’t done the best job at obstructing the path and it wouldn’t be the first time somebody from the olden days tried to block the past. If Cotta and I could breech the Old Hive, we could make way to the elevator, but would the contraption even work? If it did, could we figure out how to work it? If it’s only purpose is to go up and down, would it be that difficult to decipher?

The bootcamp was starting so I hurried down the winding path and made my way to the class. I quickly spotted Cotta standing by the front, waiting for me.

“Hey, Spec. How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. I’m eager to learn self-defense, but I don’t know what it is.”

And then, all eyes turned as a pair of shiny legs appeared. They belonged to the most beautiful girl in the city. Kaolin.

She looked over at us, then spoke in our native tongue. “I hate this place.”

“It’s not that bad,” Cotta said playing with his zipper. “They’ve got jackets and they easily open and close. So if I’m feeling slightly warm, I can zip it down but if I’m feeling a little bit cold, I can zip it up.”

Kaolin stared at him dumfounded. “It sounds to me like you just like playing with the zipper.”

“They’re fun! What if you could put a giant zipper on a house and zip or unzip it to make a completely different house?”

Kaolin turned to me. “Tell me we’re leaving this place.”

All I could do was stare at her. Her neck was so shiny and her collar bone was so pronounced. It was hypnotic.

“Spec! Did you hear me!?”

Her angry shouts melted into beautiful melodies, massaging my ears. I could see that she was angry, but that didn’t make her any less beautiful.

Her melodies quieted and she gave me an angry stare and then, walked to the back of the class and stood by herself.

Cotta leaned over and whispered, “I think her Aunt Flo is visiting.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Cotta shrugged. “I don’t know. I hear my dad say it when my mom is annoyed with him.”

A young man (slightly older than Cotta and myself) appeared yielding a sword. “Hello everybody. My name is Alex and today, I’ll be teaching you some basic moves with the sword. You should be getting your own within the next couple of weeks, but until then, you’ll each be practicing with the old ones.” Alex pulled a cart forward filled with several dull swords.

“What if we brought our own?!” Bryan appeared from the back, slashing his sword back and forth. “It’s my dad’s. He killed about a thousand NaNas with it back in the Great War.”

Alex lifted his weapon and made contact with Bryan’s sword. It leapt out of Bryan’s hands and went flying through the air, landing several yards away. “If you don’t know how to use your sword, stop pretending like you do. You’ll just end up getting hurt.”

Bryan scampered toward his sword and then dragged it back to his spot. Alex looked out at the students. Held his sword firmly in his hands. “This is called a slice.” He tilted the sword and brought it down diagonally toward the ground. “Now I want you all to choose a buddy and you’ll take turns slicing with the sword.”

I looked over at Cotta who looked over at me. “Who goes first?” he asked. We paused for a moment, then quickly put out our hands. I held up a 4 while he held up a 3. “I really gotta choose a different number,” he lamented.

James walked to the head of the class and grabbed a sword from the basket. “Is it alright if we work in a group of three? Kaolin doesn’t have a partner.”

Alex looked back at Kaolin who stood next to Bryan. “That’s fine.”

James hurried back to the two. He handed the sword to Kaolin, then wrapped his hands around behind her and showed her how to slice.

I held the sword firmly in my hands and sliced through the air, but all I could focus on was his arms around her.

“That’s some good slicin,’” Cotta said while practicing my motions, holding nothing but air. “Let me try!”

I handed him the sword and watched James smiling at Kaolin. I wondered if he thought the way I thought about her. I wondered if he felt the way I felt. I wondered if we all felt and thought the same way or if we comprehended the world differently. If we experienced the world through our five senses, it would be understandable for us to all think differently. Our bodies are all different, which means our eyes are different and our ears and everything else. So if we witness life through different means, who is to say we perceive them the same way? Does James feel the same sort of pain when Kaolin is next to me as I do when she is next to him? I only ever started feeling this way since I awoke in Newbury. Is this a normal part of growing up, or is it the city itself that has brought these feelings out of me?

They call us savages because we were raised in a place that does not adhere to their customs, but in the hive, we did not practice inflicting pain on others. In the hive, we did not need the largest house to show we were better than everyone else. In the hive, there was no better, but in Newbury, there was which meant there needed to be a worse. For every mayor, there was a janitor…yet, we are the savages.

After class, I took Cotta aside to gauge where his head was at. “Would you leave this place with me?”

The question seemed to confuse him. “Why would we leave? This place is perfect. Have you tried chicken yet? It’s what all food should taste like.”

“Cotta, I’m going to leave Newbury.”

“Where else is there to go?”

“The surface.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I want to go to the top. I want to go beyond.”

“But, we’ll die.”

“Says who?”

“Everybody.”

“Yeah, everybody who’s never been up there. It doesn’t make it true just because others say it so. If we started our own hive and told all the kids the surface was melted and nobody could survive, they would believe that to be true.”

“But it is true.”

“Cotta, we only know what is true and what isn’t if we witness it for ourselves. Newbury is the same as the Hive, it’s just bigger, but it has the same walls. It has the same ceiling. Up there, there aren’t any walls. There aren’t any barriers.”

“Are there chickens?”

“There might be. There might be anything. That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? We know what’s here. We know there are chickens and carrots and dirt. But up there, Cotta…up there is a mystery.”

“What if we breach the top and we die?”

“That’s a possibility. But I know if we stay here, we’ll die eventually. And I’ll always wonder if we had tried, if we had gone up there. I’ll never stop wondering. And that seems a lot worse than dying.”

He stared at me for awhile, contemplating all that I said. I could see him weighing everything as methodically as he could, and then he said:

“Okay, Spec. I’m with you. Until the end.”

***

We had been training for a few weeks, and already we learned the basics of sword and knife play. We were also taught several maneuvers with our hands. The Mayor thought it was time to send out search parties along the borders to find the NaNa breach into our city. My search party happened to include Cotta and Kaolin, along with a few other students and a couple of adults more adept at self-defense (including Alex) in case we were to run into a NaNa. There were 8 of us in total.

We started along the East Sector and wound up by the water mill. Alex studied the stream. “The current’s too strong for us to go up. Keep a lookout along the walls for any holes.”

We walked along the border of the city for awhile when I noticed some loose dirt, pounded in to look like the dirt around. I had seen it done several times before by Cotta and myself as we filled in gaps while hiding our secret path.

I dropped to my knees and started to dig and after a few seconds, I easily breached a tiny path. A portly man looked down at the narrow hole. “Too small for any normal-sized human to fit through.”

“We should get back and let the mayor know,” said a girl from my class. 

Alex examined the path with his flashlight. “We can go through and find where the NaNas came from. We can locate their village. We’d be heroes.” He stared at the hole and seemed lost in thought, trying to hold back a grin. “We gotta go through.”

“It’s too dangerous!” the girl shouted. “They could get us.”

“They’re not gonna get us,” Alex said dismissively.

“I’m staying,” she announced.

“Fine. I’m going.” He looked out at the rest of us. “Come if you aren’t afraid.”

Alex got on his hands and knees and crawled through the path, clutching his sword tightly. The rest of us followed behind, minus the portly man and girl.

The path was crudely constructed and highly unstable. Luckily, it wasn’t that long and we soon found ourselves in a small cavern. Alex led the way, and once again, we followed behind. I saw some unusual grooves on the wall. There were four parallel indentations carved in.

We walked for awhile until we found another crudely formed pathway. Alex didn’t even hesitate. He got down and moved ahead and we followed until we reached an even bigger cavern. Our flashlights cut through the black when we heard a sound in the distance. “Flashlights off!” Alex said in a loud whisper.

We turned the lights off and stood in complete darkness. I felt a hand on my back. “Is that you, Spec?” Cotta whispered.

“Yeah.” I reached forward and grabbed into the darkness for anybody else, trying to form a chain, but I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything. For all I knew, I no longer existed.

“Okay,” Alex said softly. “Flashlights back on.”

I turned on the light and standing inches in front of me was a large man covered in hair, teeth jagged, metal protruding from his knuckles. He made the loudest sound I had ever heard and the noise echoed through the cavern.

Alex turned and swiped at the beast with the sword but the beast swiftly dodged the attack and knocked the weapon to the ground, metal claws gleaming.

One of the boys in our class lunged with his sword, stabbing the beast in the arm when suddenly, a smaller beast appeared, metal daggers on his knuckles. He swiped at my classmate and connected with his throat. The boy fell to the ground, clutching his wound, trying to keep the blood from flowing out, but it was no use. He stopped struggling and laid there dead.

I turned around and spotted several beasts circled around us, daggers in their mouths and knuckles. The largest raised his fist up high, about to strike Cotta when a shrill voice pierced the cavern.

A girl appeared. No older than Kaolin with a prominent scar on her cheek. “We nelfurvlo alive.”

The female NaNa walked up to Cotta and came face to face with him. She stared straight into his eyes, raised her claw and then, slowly slid the daggers down the side of his face. She smiled and simply said --

“I’m Valasca -- and you’re mine.”